1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an authoring technique, for example, of a disclosure document, particularly to a document authoring system in which a browser (the Internet browsing software) is used to automatically author a document and the document can be accessed as a web page, and an authoring management program for the system.
2. Description of Related Art
In general, for example, to prepare financial data related disclosure documents, or to prepare requested documents for filing by public companies, the documents have heretofore been prepared using word processor software, particularly “Word” by Microsoft Co., Ltd. Moreover, to prepare financial data related disclosure documents using Word, a template function disposed in Word has been used to locally perform a preparation operation.
On the other hand, a technique of freely using the Internet to present the documents has been introduced. For example, “an electronic disclosure system concerning disclosure documents such as securities reports based on the securities transaction law in Japan (hereinafter abbreviated as “EDINET”)” has been introduced as of Jun. 1, 2001. In EDINET like EDGAR system in United States, HTML format has been determined as the file format of documents to be handled in order to change the related-art document filing by paper media to a mode of electronic document filing by the Internet.
Moreover, even a typical securities report is obliged to be filed in HTML format (additionally, an essential condition is that the report can be displayed in a browser). Therefore, document filing has heretofore used a method comprising: first preparing a draft by word processor software; and converting the data into HTML format in a final stage in which the draft is completed.
However, it has heretofore been impossible to prepare or display the draft in the browser. The reason is as follows. It is first necessary to map data input from a client in a database on a server so that editing is possible in the browser. Additionally, it has heretofore been possible to map the data input into the database from the browser, but it has been necessary to prepare fields for input beforehand. For example, when a registration button in a member registration web page is clicked, the data is disposed in the database on the server owned by an Internet service provider.
However, in the above-described method of preparing the field for input beforehand, the data cannot be freely edited/laid out as in a word processor. This is insufficient for preparing a financial data related disclosure document such as a securities report as a first object of the present invention.
In actuality, when it is requested to change the arrangement “document A/document B/image C/table D” in a part of the securities report to the arrangement “document A/table D/image C/document B”, it is indispensable to designate “where” to prepare “what” in order to freely edit/lay out the data as in a word processor. For details, “to insert the table after this sentence” or “to insert the sentence before this table” is concretely designated. That is, a mechanism in which “this sentence”, “this table”, or “this image” is designated in the browser is necessary. Furthermore, there has heretofore not been a mechanism to designate or select an object item of the corresponding document for the purpose of editing in the browser.
In general, when a Word template is used to prepare financial data related disclosure documents as described above, there is much laborious input work. Moreover, it has been impossible to check consistency of the financial related document with the Word template. For a financial data related disclosure document, in a securities report prepared based on the securities transaction law in Japan, filing in HTML format is accepted. However, in most of presently performed operation examples, there is no method other than that of preparing the document by word processor software and subsequently performing a batch conversion into HTML format.
In disadvantages of an input method by the word processor software as the related-art method, a final finish in HTML format cannot easily be confirmed, for example, in a visual manner, and it is not guaranteed that the data of the HTML format output by the batch conversion can appropriately be displayed in a web browser, or the converted data in HTML format does not have a simple structure of HTML format. In actual situations, there are many disadvantageous examples. Furthermore, even for an error of an input operation in an input item requiring consistency, there has been no means for automatically finding the error.
As described above, in the related-art document preparation method, there is a necessity of performing conversion to a data file in HTML format, and it is impossible to confirm the displayed state of the finally filed document. Additionally, the filed document, such as a securities report, has a considerably high technicality, and is additionally revised frequently under the disclosure rule. Therefore, it is very difficult to rapidly and correctly prepare the document. Moreover, since the data of filed documents such as securities reports has high correlation, it takes much time to verify the consistency.
Moreover, a plurality of departments in a filing company, an accounting auditor of the filing company, and a large number of parties concerned, such as a printing company, are involved in the preparation of the filed documents such as the securities reports. These parties concerned are not necessarily in the same workplace, and generally communicate with one another via facsimile or mail to proceed with the preparing/proofreading/editing of the predetermined document. This work requires due attention.
As described above, in the related-art method, display in HTML format as a final formal filing format cannot be confirmed. To confirm the display, data conversion processing has to be performed for each confirmation. On the other hand, it is not guaranteed that the converted document can correctly be displayed in a browser (the Internet browsing software). Because of these disadvantages, usability is remarkably degraded.
Therefore, it can be said that “to prepare a document required to be displayed in a browser by using a browser” is a most rational method as a solution of the disadvantages.